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The Pitch: A wireless sound system that pulls double duty: It's both a cloud-connected music machine, and a boom-bringing home theater soundbar.

The Truth: I love, love, love this thing. Love it. Love it. But first, some backstory...

It's hard not to give Sonos and its sound systems some credit. After all, this is company's whose product line started as an expensive-but-pretty way to stream your personal music library to multiple rooms in the house, and has slowly morphed into something much greater—one of the best and easiest ways to fill your home's silence with cloud streaming services (basically: your Spotifys and Pandoras). And that's not even mentioning what has emerged as the trademarked Sonos magic trick: The ability to control exactly what music plays in different rooms at the same time.

But these newer cloud-aimed Sonos systems have always had a fatal flaw: There was no easy way to hook them up to home theaters. As a result, they always fell a wee bit short of serving as a total home audio solution.

(Cue dramatic music...) Until. Now.

As an evolution of the Sonos product line, the Playbar is so obvious, that I'm honestly sort of shocked I didn't see it coming. The idea: Take a wireless cloud-streaming Sonos speaker, and toss in the ability to serve as a home theater soundbar.

As is typical with Sonos products, setup is a cinch (for once, a "Quick Start" one-sheet actually delivers). At $699, the Playbar clocks in at the upper end of home theater soundbars. And while its sound is good enough for most folks (attention Michael Bay fans: I was particularly impressed at the speaker's ability to deliver a huge amount of heft and power at high volume), you're not really paying for an incremental improvement over a cheaper speaker. Instead, you're paying for the seamless integration with the Sonos ecosystem, and the first-rate access to cloud streaming services. Predictably, this is where the product really delivers.

Fun bonus trick that makes me wonder just how long Sonos has been working on this thing: It can wirelessly sync up with older Sonos products, such as Play speakers or Sub subwoofer, allowing you to build out a true wireless surround system.

Of course, this thing ain't perfect. Obviously, the price may be a bit high for some folks, and others will surely be frustrated to discover that some streaming music services require premium subscriptions in order to pump their jams through Sonos products (Spotify, I'm looking at you). And just try to fit that blocky box design into your mother's living room. But as a product that's designed to fit into our lives, and serve as a single-product audio solution for both music and movies that's far less complex and wire-filled than receiver-based home theater systems... well, it's a winner.